Bruins advance to second playoff round via 4-2 win over Red Wings

Continued special teams dominance gave the B's their fourth straight win after dropping Game 1 at home. The Bruins will meet their most bitter rival, the Montreal Canadiens, in Round 2.

Mike Loftus The Patriot Ledger

Well, that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Credit the Bruins for that.

All the speed, all the skill, all the youthful enthusiasm and all the structure that was supposed to make the Detroit Red Wings such a threat to the B’s in Round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs turned out to be all talk, at least after the Wings won Game 1, 1-0. In the end, Detroit could count only on what veterans such as Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg could give them, and it wasn’t nearly enough to keep the Bruins from completing a 4-1 win in the best-of-seven series with Saturday’s 4-2 victory at TD Garden.

The Bruins face their most bitter rival, the Montreal Canadiens, in Round 2. Dates and times for the series haven’t been announced.

“I don’t mean to crush (the) question, but we’re so far away from thinking about that right now,” said Bruins coach Claude Julien, who will soon begin preparing for his fourth playoff series against the team that gave him his first NHL coaching job. “We’ll enjoy the win today, the series win.”

The Bruins earned that right, plus a couple of days off. While they ran off four consecutive wins to eliminate the Wings, none of the victories came easily, and the last two were particularly tough to nail down: The B’s had to overcome an 0-2 deficit before scoring a 3-2 overtime win in Thursday’s Game 4 at Joe Louis Arena, and had a very hard time getting away from the Wings on Saturday.

“They’re a team that’s got lots of character, so we knew we really had to step on them,” said Patrice Bergeron, who set up Zdeno Chara for a tie-breaking (2-1) power-play goal with 3.8 seconds left in the second period. “There was talk about making sure that we were not going back over there (for Game 6).”

The Bruins did that in what had become typical fashion: They broke the Red Wings with their special teams. The B’s went 2-for-6 on the power play to finish at 6-for-16, 37.5 for the series, and killed six of seven Detroit power plays to finish at 90 percent (18-for-20) in that category.

The critical power-play strike was Chara’s, because it answered the game-tying PPG Pavel Datsyuk scored at 14:41 of the second, and came just as the Wings thought they might be even with the B’s entering the final 20 minutes.

“I was emotional,” Chara said. “It was a big game, and a big goal. I’m not afraid to show it.”

If the Bruins feared anything on Saturday, it was probably the thought of starting a chain-reaction similar to last year’s first round. They had a 3-1 lead and a chance to close out Toronto at home, too, but before they knew it, they needed a desperate rally in the third period of Game 7 to escape the Leafs.

So adding to the 2-1 lead they took into the third was important, and Milan Lucic did that at 4:27, converting a wide-open chance in front of Jonas Gustavsson (29 saves) on a pass from Torey Krug.

“They responded to it, too,” said Krug, whose two-assist game (he also had a point on Loui Eriksson’s game-opening power play goal just 3:27 into the game) tied him with Bergeron and Datsyuk for the series scoring lead at five points. “That was a very important goal.”

Henrik Zetterberg’s brilliant, top-corner shot – after an equally brilliant save by Tuukka Rask (31 saves) on Justin Abdelkader – pulled the Wings back within a goal with 3:52 to play, but they quickly complicated their comeback bid by taking a too-many-men penalty with 3:04 left. After some hairy moments with Gustavsson pulled for an extra skater, Jarome Iginla sealed the win, and the series, with an empty-net goal at 19:44.

“I thought we played really well in this series,” Julien said. “We had to play really well to beat this team.

“I don’t think we had a soft game. It was important for us to end this, and not prolong it.’’